Senate race in state remains untainted by mud

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, October 26, 2006

BELLINGHAM -- Because he has run a Senate campaign that refrained from personal attacks on his opponent, Mike McGavick mused Wednesday, national Republicans may have chosen to let him run on empty.

McGavick has taken in millions, and put a $2.5 million loan of his own money into his race against Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell. But he isn't getting boosted by any of the relentlessly negative, "Texas Chain Saw Massacre"-style ads aired in other states by the Republican National Committee and the GOP's Senate campaign committee.

Washington can thank its dogged underdog Republican Senate nominee for a not inconsiderable favor.

In Tennessee, Rep. Harold Ford Jr. seeks to be the first African American senator from the South since Reconstruction. National Republicans aired a mock on-the-street interview ad in which a bare-shouldered white woman says, "I met Harold at the Playboy party" and later coos, "Harold, call me."

The same ad mocks Ford on national defense, saying: "Canada can take care of North Korea. They're not busy." The Canadian Embassy has called the White House to note that Canada's soldiers are fighting -- and dying of late -- in Afghanistan.

We've had whiffs from the political sewer pipe this year.

Joel Connelly has been a staff columnist for more than 30 years. He comments regularly on politics and public policy.

The Building Industry Association of Washington and its allies mounted a smear campaign in the primary against the state Supreme Court's mellow chief justice, Gerry Alexander.

National Republicans did put out one sexually suggestive video about Cantwell. Otherwise, in our Senate race, it's still possible to hear intelligent discussion of issues facing the country.

Last summer, the Bellingham City Club invited McGavick and Cantwell to face off before its members. Cantwell's campaign waited and then blew off the invitation, as it did with more than a dozen joint-appearance offers.

The City Club went ahead, however, and put McGavick through the paces. The experience showed the hazards of going beyond sound-bite answers.

Ken Hoover, a Western Washington University professor who moderated, asked about the growing disparity of income in America. "The CEOs are now paid 300 times as much as the average laborer," he said.

"The middle class seems to be hollowing out," McGavick agreed. "The middle class is so critical to the entire proposition that is America."

McGavick then strayed onto risky ground.

"While the spectrum of wealth, from the wealthiest to the non-wealthy, has become wider, it's not true that all boats aren't being lifted," he argued.

"The fact is that it is still better to be poor in American than any other nation on Earth. Because the fact is that we are able to provide a comfortable lifestyle across the spectrum."

Democrats pounced Wednesday with yet another reminder of compensation and stock options received by McGavick when he left his post of CEO at Safeco to run for the Senate.

"McGavick's $28 million golden parachute is equal to the earnings of 1,400 four-person Washington families at the poverty line for an entire year," said the state Democrats, Cantwell's designated attack dogs.

Cantwell has spoken of the Iraq war in vague, carefully modulated statements, talking just enough about troop withdrawal to snuff out any viable rebellion on the political left.

McGavick, by contrast, was thinking out loud Wednesday.

"If you are elected to the Senate, would you support commitment of more troops to Iraq?" asked lawyer Drew Pettus, citing statements by Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

"I'm defining winning as a little different than the president," McGavick responded.

Instead of trying to make Iraq into a stable democracy, he said, "Victory is not letting terrorists run the joint and use it as a staging ground against us."

McGavick raised, as "one of the places you could go," a partition of Iraq into separate Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish enclaves.

He noted that Iraq is "an artificial state," its boundaries created by the victors of World War I.

Is the U.S. presence in Iraq creating "a new generation of terrorists?" asked Bob Olson, a retired Air Force colonel.

"I have no doubt our initial presence was used to recruit," McGavick said in reply.

He argued, however, that al-Qaida was in business and aiming at the United States through much of the 1990s, saying "9/11 did not come out of the blue." And to precipitously withdraw from Iraq would allow terrorists to "follow us here."

Such an answer won't win the hearts of Bellingham's anti-war liberals. Still, McGavick was engaging on an issue that has the country conflicted and seeking a new course.

The summer sun was shining and the mood was upbeat as McGavick traveled the state in an "Open Mike" tour.

He invited questions, held open events -- avoided this year by President Bush -- and welcome the ever-present Cantwell campaign cameraman.

He is behind now, but he isn't getting ugly.

Given the quality of our Senate candidates, and the voters' serious mood, we could have used more than just two debates totaling just 90 minutes.

Columnist Joel Connelly has written about politics for the P-I since 1973.